Hamburg to scrap tuition fees

Social Democrat-ruled city to get rid of tuition fees for universities by winter 2012

by Anna Meera Gaonkar

The City of Hamburg plans to do away with tuition fees as of the 2012 winter semester for the University of Hamburg and eight other public-funded institutions.

This would leave Germany with just two of its 16 federal states charging fees for public-funded higher education, writes the University World News.

University of Hamburg is one of the University of Copenhagen's exchange partner universities. Germany is the country sending most students to Copenhagen.

Read article: Six times more Germans in six years.

City government to pay

Hamburg's new policy will make Bavaria and Lower Saxony the last German states still retaining fees for all students.

Under the former Christian Democrat government, students in Hamburg were charged a EUR 500 tuition fee ahead of each semester.

Loss of income for Hamburg's university, Germany's fourth largest institution, will amount to around EUR 39 million. According to Higher Education Minister Dr Dorothee Stapelfeldt, this funding gap will be closed via the city state government's overall budget. Given the government's self-imposed budget growth restrictions, just how it will get this money remains unclear.

Read article: Dieter and Petra go study abroad.

anna.m.gaonkar@adm.ku.dk

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